Legend of Grimrock Previews / Reviews

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 4, 2012

The Legend of Grimrock is certainly one of the more exciting indie RPGs of this year (and that’s actually saying something! It’s a good time to be an RPG fan…),  releasing next week via GOG.COM, Steam, and the developer’s own website. I’ve not played it yet – I’m here with the rest of you having paid for the pre-order and waiting for the public release. But some folks have, and here’s what they have to say:

Rock Paper Shotgun has a “Wot I Think” about the game… and John Walker evidently thinks highly of it. This particular excerpt really excites me: “They’re again inspired by Dungeon Master’s nature, most often involving teleporters. But this where the game really gets into its own, going far further with this concept, creating puzzles reminiscent more of Portal than Eye Of The Beholder. You’ll have to start thinking with teleporters if you’re going to figure a lot of them out. They’re inventive, and they’re often tough.”

This is what I keep talking about, dagnabbit! It’s not just dressing up an old game design with pretty new normal maps and shaders. Though after more than fifteen years since we’ve seen a game like this, they could probably get away with that. But as I keep contending, there’s more that can be built upon the foundation of these older designs, especially since they’ve been left fallow for a decade-and-a-half. I’m relieved and delighted to hear that developer Almost Human is experimenting with this.

GameBanshee’s Eric Schwarz has a positive take on LoG as well.  My favorite excerpt sorta echoes my above point: “Legend of Grimrock proves without a shadow of a doubt that old-school game designs are more than capable and enjoyable in this day and age. It’s a common myth thrown around that older titles died out because they were surpassed by more technically competent and “sophisticated” titles, but Grimrock demonstrates just how much of a fallacy that appeal to technological superiority is. ”

Preach on!

Both reviews suggest 15+ hours to complete the game, which sounds about perfect for me.

Finally, here’s a video review of the game from Elder Geek, showing a bit of it in action. They call the puzzles “nothing short of diabolical, and we love it!”

Mmm… yeah. Maybe I just shouldn’t plan on getting any work done near the end of next week…

UPDATE: And one more preview from Gamers Dissent, which I confess I haven’t watched to the end (but he confesses he hasn’t played it to the end, either…)

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